by David Adams
Liao, however, had to maintain the presence and dignity of an officer. She did not sing or tell stories. She merely ate her meal with a smile on her face, but her mind was racing. For the first time since she’d arrived, her thoughts were turned towards a place other than her present. Towards the future.
Perhaps the Toralii had hoped that releasing their sick member would calm them down, make them come to accept the Alliance as their masters. Instead, it ignited within the Human survivors a fiery passion that channelled itself into a singular thought: she wanted freedom for everyone.
The dinner, fuelled by singing and Sunkret’s drink, grew boisterous and soon the Toralii guards intervened. Roughly, but without violence, each of the Humans was lead, dragged or carried back to their cells. The guards took Liao away last, attaching the thick handcuffs that were their tradition, then walking beside her, two of them guiding her to the officer’s section.
Which was where she wanted to be anyway.
Liao’s cell was more spacious and accommodating than the other quarters given to her fellow Humans. Although her doors were locked at night, and she had no window, the other officers could come and go as they pleased. Even better, the Toralii had provided her with a writing desk and a modest, but sufficient, supply of writing implements, along with a ream of some kind of parchment, the top of the sheets stuck together with a form of glue. The Toralii had a strange style of writing using thin, refillable shafts of bone which felt, in her hand, how she imagined an old fashioned feather quill to be; large and unwieldy, yet balanced.
But it worked. That was all she needed.
“Music,” Liao said to the empty room, exercising one of the few genuine luxuries that the Toralii allowed her as the CO. “Random, shuffle.”
A soft tune began to fill the room. She actually recognised it; Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. Piano Sonata No. 14. A recording from ancient Earth, played through alien speakers.
As she listened, Liao tore strips out of the parchment. Each one was given a name. Liao. O’Hill. Erikson. Every Human prisoner became a token. Then she made one for the various other players, including the Toralii. Kest. Sunkret. Commandant Yarri.
With an armful of strips of parchment she walked to the far bulkhead. The glue residue was enough to stick the notes to the wall; she put each one of them up on the walls, in groups. Human, Toralii, Kel-Voran…
And one of them simply labelled Rescue.
The Sanders one was moved out, out, out and away, towards the corner. The corner was freedom. They all had to get there. But how?
Liao took a step back, then another and another, until her back was against the opposite bulkhead. She took in the picture from the widest possible angle, mentally replacing the strips of parchment with the faces of the people involved.
The puzzle of how to escape from Zar’krun was all laid out before her. She just had to figure out a way to solve it.
“Permission to enter, ma’am?” asked O’Hill from the doorway. “Although I could stand to listen to the music for a bit longer.”
How long had he been standing there? “Come in,” she said.
He stepped inside, head swivelling as he took in her plan, eyes roaming over it with confusion at first, then curiosity. “What’s this?”
“A plan,” she said, then shrugged. “The start of a plan.”
“Okay,” O’Hill said, scrunching up his face. “Let’s hear your master plan.”
“Break out. Kill the Toralii if we can on the way.”
“That’s… not much of a plan.”
She knew that better than anyone. “It’s a work in progress.”
O’Hill nodded to the Toralii group. “Why are they on the board?”
“They’re a part of the plan, but a separate part. Good guys go in the right corner, freedom. Bad guys go in the left corner, death.”
O’Hill raised an eyebrow at that. “You’re making plans to take them out?”
“If I can. Two birds with one stone.”
“Make sure that we’re the stone, not the birds.”
She frowned a little. “You don’t sound like you’re on board with that.”
O’Hill grimaced. “I’m on board with any genuine escape plan you can come up with, ma’am, but this? This isn’t a plan.”
“It’s… the start of a plan. Half a plan. It’s half a plan to get past the guards and half a plan to get off this station.”
“It’s nothing. Half a pig, and half a pig isn’t a pig. It’s a bloody mess. This isn’t even a plan to make a plan. It’s… it’s crazy. A wall of crazy.” O’Hill added, almost as an afterthought, “Captain.”
Liao pursed her lips. From whatever audio system the Toralii used, Beethoven’s song came to a soft, gentle end, and a new piece started playing, something Indian with sitars and an electronic beat. “Guess we should just focus on getting out of here.”
“I know you got a score to settle with the commandant,” O’Hill said. “Believe me, I know that feeling. But nobody can win all their battles. Not even you, the great Melissa Liao, Butcher of Kor’Vakkar.” He smiled a cocky smile, but behind it, there was something more. “Sometimes surviving is enough.”
“You’re right,” Liao said, a little more bitterly than she meant to. “But it’s easier said than done.”
“Everything is.”
She nodded grimly. “I agree. But sufficient enough to say… there’s a special place in hell for our good commandant.”
“Home is always special.”
She laughed, and for a moment, everything actually seemed okay. Like she actually could just walk away from Yarri, from Zar’krun, and everything would sort itself out in the end. For three or four seconds, the idea that they would all be free was a foreseeable future.
But as fast as it came, the notion faded.
“Well, I suppose.” Liao clapped her hand against the bare stump of her arm, stroking her fingers over the mounts for the prosthetic and the lingering scraps of flesh. “Still, for now, I should focus on this. Maybe I’ll be able to figure out some kind of escape plan.”
“Maybe,” O’Hill said, “the Toralii will find out about it, and they’ll laugh themselves to death.” His tone grew serious. “Captain, we don’t even know where we are. What I mean is: we don’t know if we’re on a planet, a space station, moon… we have no idea how far away we are from Earth, or any kind of contact with the Telvan, the Kel-Voran, or anyone who we could consider even remotely friendly. Not even our fellow humans.”
It was a good point. “My gut tells me it’s the Toralii I should fight, but Anderson put me in this cage. I won’t forget that.”
The look on his face suggested that O’Hill wouldn’t, either. “Look, in Texas, your average motorist is so heavily armed they call them cavalry. Everything's bigger in Texas—including the assholes.” The slightest of slight pauses. “Actually, ma'am, I think he's from Kentucky. He ain’t one of us.”
Liao managed a tiny smile.
“Regardless,” O’Hill said, “we can’t be looking to get out of the box until we know where the box is.”
The song ended, and the music changed again, to a heavy rap beat. She recognised the song, too, and knew where it came from. Her gut hurt. Oh God… no.
“So,” Liao said, “the Toralii Alliance had access to Rowe’s media collection. The one we traded with the Telvan for. Somehow, they ended up with it; or some of it at least. Enough to let us use it… recreationally, I suppose.”
“I’m guessing so.”
“That’s probably where the recordings came from.”
“Yes, ma’am,” O’Hill said. “Much as I can figure it.”
“And that collection had Insane Clown Posse on it.”
“Right.”
Liao groaned and pinched her nose. “Well, at least we know why they really destroyed Earth.”
O’Hill smirked coyly. “You don’t walk the Juggalo path, Captain Liao? Did you even have ICP back in China?”
She affixed h
im with a withering stare.
He grinned back. “Captain, if I told you that I had been to The Gathering of The Juggalos, went there every other year before I enlisted, I think you might look down your nose at me a little bit. Just a tiny bit, ma’am.”
“A teeny-tiny bit. At least tell me you didn’t do too many drugs.”
“Drugs.” O’Hill’s smile twisted. “All I’ll say is, I know that the primary effect of coke is converting your desire to sleep and your money into a desire to do more coke.”
She couldn’t say she had done anything that crazy in her youth, but… it took all sorts. “What you do on your own time is your own business, but if the Toralii wanted to torture me, they could just put this music on loop for a few hours. Or once.”
“You’ll come to like it eventually. ICP isn’t just a music; it’s a lifestyle.”
The edge of her mouth curled up. “Strange lifestyle for a United States Marine.”
O’Hill shrugged. “Nobody can understand it, especially one who hasn’t lived it.”
That was true enough for most things. “Fair. Well, as long as it makes you happy, I guess it doesn’t matter one bit.” She pivoted on her heel, looking around her cell. “Maybe I’ll eventually come to like this place, too.”
“Praying for Stockholm Syndrome seems like a weird request at this point, ma’am. A fecal prevarication.”
“Well,” Liao said dryly, “I was in that suspension tank for months on end. You don’t poop in that thing—it all happens when you come out. Believe me, I have medical evidence that I am full of shit.”
He laughed, and almost as though on cue, a faint purple light blinked on in the corner of her cell. Lockdown. The time for conversation was over.
O’Hill straightened his back. “Captain, I should get back to my cell.”
Sooner rather than later. “Dismissed,” she said, and O’Hill left.
The thick metal door of her cell slid closed behind him, and the blue light turned purple, indicating it was locked.
Liao went back to staring at the wall and at the pieces of her plan laid out before her, which refused to come together.
At least Sanders was okay. One down.
CHAPTER III
Another Fine Navy Day
*****
Operations
TFR Beijing
Velsharn, High Orbit
“RADAR CONTACT,” SAID LIEUTENANT LING, the Beijing’s radar operator. “L2 Lagrange point. Toralii freighter class. Reflections match the size and density of the Rubens.”
Commander Kamal Iraj straightened the collar on his uniform. Command of the Beijing had never sat well with him; he still felt like an intruder on a vessel he had served on for years. It was Liao’s ship. He was just borrowing it.
The newest development, however, was a problem. The Rubens was not due back for several months. Their mission, one of the utmost importance… and secrecy.
“What’s the play here, Commander?” asked Lieutenant Commander Jiang, the Beijing’s former Tactical officer turned XO. She leaned in close to him in case he needed to speak to her privately, something he himself had done for Liao many times. “You think it’s the Rubens?”
“I doubt it,” Iraj said.
“I doubt it, too.” Jiang shook her head. “Magnet is a goddamn machine. We would have received a communication by now. He’s very prompt with that.”
Magnet probably knew that not signalling his arrival would result in exactly the kind of conversation the senior staff of the alert ships were having right then—or in them simply opening fire.
Iraj turned to their communications officer. “Mister Cole, is that skunk singing?”
Lieutenant Cole, the transfer from the Washington, had his eyes fixed on his console. “We are receiving a signal, sir. It just came through.” He glanced at Iraj, squinting in concern. “It’s on 121.5 MHz. The military distress channel.”
That channel was the same one the Toralii used to signal them in the past. Definitely not Magnet.
“Signal General Quarters throughout the ship. Mister Cole, inform the rest of the fleet of this development and have them stand by. Inform the Iilan, as well. Paint the skunk with a targeting laser; make sure they know we’re looking at them. Coordinate with the rest of the fleet, combine targeting information.”
“Aye aye,” Cole said.
Iraj turned to Engineering. Ensign Saara, the black-furred Toralii who had formally joined the crew, worked at her custom, oversized console. “Engineering?”
[“All systems report power distribution is nominal. Hull plating is ready to be charged. Weapons are loaded and armed. Power cores are coming to full power. General Quarters is now at full effect.”]
“Mister Ling,” Iraj said, “pass radar information to tactical. Yosef, ready to engage that target.”
Ensign Sadira Yosef, the tactical officer transferred from the Knight to replace Jiang, nodded her confirmation. “Target locked in. Relaying strike coordinates to the rest of the fleet. Strike craft are away.”
Then there was nothing more they could do. If it came to battle, they were ready. Iraj slipped the communications headset over his head. “Send through the Toralii transmission.”
His Toralii was terrible, worse than Liao’s, despite having nearly twice the practice she had. He recalled the many lessons he’d had, dragging their words into his mind, focusing on their use of tones. That always screwed him up.
[“Attention Human inhabitants of Velsharn of Task Force Resolution,”] said the coarse feline-esque voice. Iraj swore he could feel a sense of worry and unease accompanying the words. [“This is the Telvan vessel Flowing Water Over Smooth Pebbles. We come from the Telvan government on a special diplomatic mission, as mediators between you and the Toralii Alliance, regarding a matter of concern for both parties.”]
A matter of concern for both parties. That was a strange way of discussing the silence of their mutual enemies after years of war.
“I understand,” Iraj said. “Flowing Water Over Smooth Pebbles, please be advised: this area is open to Telvan traffic, and you are permitted to enter the Velsharn system. The Telvan have long been our allies, and we welcome your visit, especially as bearers of important news.” He muted the channel. “Commander Jiang, keep a weapons lock on that contact. If they so much as fart, I want them blown to debris. We don’t know if they’re really Telvan.”
“Aye aye, sir.” She gestured to her old seat, where Yosef was. “Tactical, maintain weapons lock.”
[“Very well. The news regards the return of one of your comrades. She is sickly and requires medical attention beyond that which the Toralii Alliance can provide to one of your species.”]
Iraj’s eyes met Jiang’s, and between them, an unspoken, hopeful message was transmitted. Could it be Liao?
Surely not. The Toralii Alliance would never give up their greatest bargaining chip. It could be one of the other crewmen. Cheung, perhaps, their chief of marines.
Or perhaps Ben. That notion was a sour one. He would sooner flush that freak out an airlock.
“We are eager to receive our crewman back.” Iraj kept his voice even, banishing as much excitement as he could. “Please dock with our lead vessel, and we shall discuss the terms of the transaction.”
He watched the radar screen on his console as the target ship drew closer. Normally, monitoring the incoming ship would be Liao’s job… he would stand off to one side, watching anxiously on his own display.
Allah subhānahu wa ta'āla had put him in the position of captain; it was not his place to question Allah’s decisions, only to comply. Iraj’s prayers had not had any result, regardless of intensity and frequency. But he knew why. The teacher was always quiet during the test.
Agonisingly slowly, the other ship drew closer as the minutes ticked away. Half an hour later, it was within optical range. His scope showed a standard Toralii freighter of the same design as the Knight and the Rubens. How many of those ships did the Toralii Alliance have? Ten
s of thousands, according to intelligence, and possibly a hundred times that number.
The Toralii Alliance had lost a third of their military fleet during the assault on Velsharn, but their industrial capability was staggering. The few constructs the Human forces had recovered were enough to not only maintain their fleet of ships, but also build more of their kind. They were sleepless, precise, and capable, and construction on the very first Triumph class vessel in a long time—christened the TFR Berlin—would be complete within the year. At the rate the constructs were programmed to reproduce, the next ship would take three months. The one after that, four weeks. After that… who knew?
But who would crew the ships?
They had gotten around their losses by promoting and transferring internally, but that couldn’t last. They would have to bring up a new generation of crew. That posed a problem for the future.
With the faintest lurch, the Beijing pulled away from the fleet, moving towards the approaching Flowing Water Over Smooth Pebbles. The Washington and a dozen other ships, including the Telvan Krekhan, The Hand of Reckoning, and the Iilan Worldship Eight maintained overwatch, Broadsword gunships and Wasp strike craft deployed in an angry screen. Behind them, the Iilan vessel, their spherical guest, floated in space, its whole surface emitting heat picked up by the infra-red cameras.
With a bright flash, the Iilan ship jumped away, leaving the jump point eerily vacant.
“Sir?” Jiang asked, her confusion clear.
Iraj shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. They weren’t scheduled for a departure.”
“Great,” Jiang said, bitterness tinging her voice. “Our strongest ship is gone.”
“If they fled at the first sign of trouble, they were never our strongest ship.”
She seemed to accept that, or pretended to well enough that he put it out of his mind. No point crying over what could not be changed.
Iraj’s ship crept towards the Telvan vessel as it decelerated, and soon, the two ships were side to side.